Comment 2 for bug 1927264

$ reverse-depends src:php7.4
Reverse-Depends
* libapache2-mod-php (for libapache2-mod-php7.4)
* libphp-embed (for libphp7.4-embed)
* php (for php7.4)
* php-all-dev (for php7.4-dev)
* php-all-dev (for php7.4-json)
* php-bcmath (for php7.4-bcmath)
* php-bz2 (for php7.4-bz2)
* php-cgi (for php7.4-cgi)
* php-cli (for php7.4-cli)
* php-curl (for php7.4-curl)
* php-dev (for php7.4-dev)
* php-enchant (for php7.4-enchant)
* php-fpm (for php7.4-fpm)
* php-gd (for php7.4-gd)
* php-gmp (for php7.4-gmp)
* php-imap (for php7.4-imap)
* php-interbase (for php7.4-interbase)
* php-intl (for php7.4-intl)
* php-json (for php7.4-json)
* php-ldap (for php7.4-ldap)
* php-mbstring (for php7.4-mbstring)
* php-mysql (for php7.4-mysql)
* php-odbc (for php7.4-odbc)
* php-pgsql (for php7.4-pgsql)
* php-phpdbg (for php7.4-phpdbg)
* php-pspell (for php7.4-pspell)
* php-readline (for php7.4-readline)
* php-snmp (for php7.4-snmp)
* php-soap (for php7.4-soap)
* php-sqlite3 (for php7.4-sqlite3)
* php-sybase (for php7.4-sybase)
* php-tidy (for php7.4-tidy)
* php-xml (for php7.4-xml)
* php-xmlrpc (for php7.4-xmlrpc)
* php-zip (for php7.4-zip)

Packages without architectures listed are reverse-dependencies in: amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el, s390x
$

php-defaults 2:8.0+82~0build1 has not yet made it into the release pocket, so removing php7.4 will make large swaths of packages uninstallable (and results in proposed-migration being rather untrustworthy in resolving these uninstallabilities correctly). php-defaults appears to be blocked from migrating by autopkgtest regressions that are unrelated to php7.4. So removing php7.4 does not look correct to me.

We will eventually have to deal with php-defaults migration making php7.4-common uninstallable; but that is likely best handled by a force hint in britney, not a forced removal of php7.4.